Combet: The day Julia Gillard told me she would step aside and back me for PM

Greg Combet

Being inside the Labor government during the leadership rivalry between Rudd and Gillard was like being trapped inside a political and moral dilemma. It was not possible to have honest conversations with your colleagues in the caucus, apart from trusted friends, because the risk was that such conversations would themselves be leaked. I found the destabilisation of Gillard’s leadership vicious and extreme.

I was staggered, for example, when a senior Liberal confided to me the opposition’s belief was that some of the material for the attack on Gillard over her association with former AWU official Bruce Wilson had been provided to the Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop by our own side. The tactics used against Gillard were so ruthless and damaging I couldn’t excuse them, nor do I think they could be justified as payback for the manner of Rudd’s removal. In the dilemma we faced, these were my moral judgments. For these reasons I continued supporting Gillard’s leadership until the end.

Labor’s second term in government was difficult not only for me politically but also personally. I had a couple of medical conditions that deteriorated during this period. One day before the 2010 election, I was in parliament experiencing a terrible pain in my leg. I went to see Mal Washer, the Liberal MP and doctor, who arranged for me to be taken to hospital in a wheelchair. As I was waiting atthe lift, the doors opened and there was my sparring partner Sophie Mirabella. ‘You’ll do anything to get media,’ she huffed. It turnedout to be a vascular condition and I had surgery, but this did little to alleviate the awful aching in the lower leg, which could only be relieved by stretching the limb out.

Question time became a daily ordeal because I couldn’t put my leg up. I had also been experiencing pain in my neck, shoulder and down my right arm for a long time. Following a fall in 2012 I discovered the underlying cause of the pain was osteoporosis. The fall occurred at an Australian Meat Industry Council conference, when the steps from the stage gave way under my feet, resulting in a couple of cracked ribs. All this meant I was in a bit of pain for most of Labor’s second term. It was the most difficult time of my working life.

Advertisement

My physical discomfort was matched by anxiety over Labor’s awful political circumstances. I agonised over whether to be more active in the internal machinations, which ultimately would have meant that I became a player for the leadership myself. Some of my colleagues lobbied me in that direction. However, I was increasingly thinking I needed to get my health in order. Over Christmas in 2012, I resolved that I needed to make changes in my life, to look after myself better, and be more available for my family and to attend to my friendships.

I had also met the ABC journalist Juanita Phillips, and I wanted to give this new relationship a chance to work. One night in 2012 I was watching the ABC News in the office and I remarked to one of my staff members how Juanita Phillips had made an impression on me when I had met her five years earlier. ‘'You should ask her out, she’s single now,'’ was the response. I thought, '‘OK, that’s a gutsy idea,'’ so I did. It turned out that I had made an impression on her too.

The destabilisation of Gillard gathered pace as we entered the election year. By the start of 2013, there were stories in the media virtually every day, damaging to Gillard, aided and abetted by people inside the government, and designed to run down Labor’s support and intimidate colleagues into changing their position. Over the Queen’s Birthday break in June 2013, Juanita, her children Marcus and Mischa and I had a weekend away with [former Queensland Premier] Anna Bligh and [Bligh’s husband] Greg Withers in the NSW southern tablelands.

The last two weeks of June would be the final parliamentary sitting weeks before the election, effectively the last chance for the leadership to be resolved. I headed back to parliament for the final sitting fortnight with the moral and political dilemma weighing heavily. I thought the political tide was flowing out very rapidly for Gillard, but I was not going to switch my support.

I asked for a private discussion with Julia and laid out my thoughts. Labor was heading to an electoral defeat. No matter what the outcome, the leadership needed to be resolved once and for all by a ballot of the caucus before parliament rose - otherwise the destabilisation and disunity would continue to polling day, further discrediting Labor in the eyes of the voters.

My advice was that the issue needed to be brought to a head. Many people would take offence at the advice I had provided. But as in all her dealings with me, she was generous and decent. She spoke to me privately and said she would stand aside if I stood against Rudd.

‘'My view is that Labor’s electoral position would be best served by moving to a new leader, and I think you are the best person to take it on,'’ she said. ‘'I will muster as much support as I can for you. I don’t know if it will be enough to get you over the line, but you are held in high regard and I would do everything I could to persuade people to switch their support to you.'’

This was quite an extraordinary and generous proposition, and a very humbling one for me personally. But that day, when I was talking to Julia, I was 90 per cent gone. Not only did I have my personal issues to consider but I also thought it was far too late to orchestrate a change like the one she was suggesting.

I told Julia I wasn’t prepared to stand. Along with my close colleague and friend Craig Emerson and some other Gillard supporters, we worked on bringing the issue to a head. I did some interviews and called for the speculation to be resolved. I told the ABC’s listeners that the Prime Minister would not step down and her cabinet supporters would not be asking her to go. That meant Kevin had to decide what he was going to do - if he believed he had the support in the caucus, then he should challenge.

Rudd’s supporters had backgrounded The Daily Telegraph that he had the numbers to successfully challenge. I said in the interviews that if that was the case, he should challenge. One of Rudd’s intermediaries told me he was furious about that I had said in the media, and that he was likely to background against me to some journalists. I ran into Kevin in a corridor of Parliament House and he was pretty agitated.

The next day payback was administered in the form of a nasty and untrue Telegraph story attacking me, stating that I had been prepared to switch my support to Rudd if he made me treasurer. This was a story that had been peddled to the Press Gallery for two years, but that no one else would publish because it was false. Its origin was in a one-on-one conversation I had with Kevin in late 2011, following a discussion about the international climate change negotiations. At that time I thought he looked in terrible shape, suffering badly from what had happened to him more than a year before. As a human being, I was concerned for him. Kevin produced a couple of glasses of whiskey, over which I expressed my concern for him personally, discussed what had happened, and responded honestly to his questions about my own ambition for my time in the parliament. This was naive on my part. I said that I had not come into parliament with the ambition of becoming leader, but if I had the opportunity one day I thought Treasury was the best job in government.

There was no discussion, no hint or suggestion of a deal or of any switch in my support from Gillard, or Wayne Swan for that matter. I would simply never do that. I left pleased that we could relax, have a drink and talk. And yet before too long I was fielding calls from journalists. I immediately called Wayne Swan and Julia to let them know. Wayne simply said, ‘It’s OK, that’s exactly how Rudd operates.’ On June 26, 2013, Julia called a leadership spill. Before I went to the caucus meeting, I called all my staff together and told them of my plans. I cared for them a lot, and wanted them to know and be prepared. They were all about to lose their jobs.

Caucus elected Kevin as leader by 57 votes to Julia’s 45. It was distressing to see the division between some of my closest friends in the caucus. Jenny Macklin, Tanya Plibersek and I had stuck together. Penny Wong had decided to support Rudd and I understood her reasoning - she is a tough politician. But it was hard when some of the tension surfaced between her and Tanya. I cared for both of them a lot, they are tremendous people, and they will play key leadership roles for Labor in the future. There was no celebratory feeling in the room that I could detect now that the issue had been resolved. I think there was a general feeling of despair.

That night was the end of my career in parliamentary politics.

[Combet declined Rudd’s offer of a ministry].

The Fights of My Life by Greg Combet with Mark Davis is published by MUP next week, RRP $32.99, ebook $14.99, available at www.mup.com.au